AP(!) reporter rakes State Department over the coals for double standards involving Israel(!!).

What’s more startling? That the State Department can’t keep its spin straight anymore? Or is it that the freaking Associated Press is now calling them on it?

…Associated Press reporter Matt Lee caught deputy State spokesman Mark Toner by surprise at a briefing this week. Lee asked about Saturday’s US bombing of a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that left 22 patients and staff dead.

The administration has called the attack a tragic mistake. But Lee recalled Israel’s August 2014 shelling of a UN school in Gaza — which State immediately labeled “disgraceful,” adding: “The suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians.”

Lee asked: Does that policy still hold?

I mean, really, that’s a question with a heck of a lot of teeth to it.  Needless to say, the policy is neither still being held, nor abandoned; and that’s because the State Department doesn’t have one policy. It has two policies, or more accurately, standards: one for the Jews, and one for everybody else.  Although, admittedly, I would have said the same thing about the Associated Press.

Via Instapundit.

Washington Free Beacon causes US State Department to act like spoiled children. In front of Europe, too.

Does State even HAVE a victory condition, here? – Not that they have one for Iran, either*.

Today’s event, of course, elevates the Washington Free Beacon. After all, this is not exactly a bad time to have a reputation for being personally hated by the Obama administration.  In fact, I kind of wish for that status myself:

Officials with the Department of State threatened to call security Monday on a Washington Free Beacon reporter who was attempting to report on a briefing held by senior Obama administration figures in Vienna on the eve of an expected nuclear agreement with Iran.

Two State Department officials booted theFree Beacon from a room where Wendy Sherman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, was talking to reporters, despite the Free Beacon’s being credentialed by the Austrian government for the ongoing Iranian nuclear talks.

Continue reading Washington Free Beacon causes US State Department to act like spoiled children. In front of Europe, too.

The White House sort of admits that this Hillary Clinton email thing has legs.

(Via Hot Air) Oh, this is good. Short version: Jon Karl asked Josh Earnest, quite often, if the administration knew about Hillary Clinton’s habit of ignoring government rules by never using (or even having) her work email.  Hilarity ensued, if you’re into that sort of thing:

A free translation:

Continue reading The White House sort of admits that this Hillary Clinton email thing has legs.

State Department blames uptick in recent ritual human sacrifices on global unemployment rates.

Come, I will show you a wonder: Chris Matthews saying something that most of the people reading this will agree with*. Transcript via Right Scoop (video of all of this over there, too):

[CHRIS] MATTHEWS: Are we killing enough of them [Islamic State cultists]?

[State Department spokeswoman MARIE] HARF: We’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians. They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs, whether —

MATTHEWS: We’re not going to be able to stop that in our lifetime or fifty lifetimes. There’s always going to be poor people. There’s always going to be poor muslims, and as long as there are poor Muslims, the trumpet’s blowing and they’ll join. We can’t stop that, can we?

HARF: We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people

Continue reading State Department blames uptick in recent ritual human sacrifices on global unemployment rates.

Career State Department staffer accuses Hillary Clinton’s staff of sanitizing Benghazi records.

This comes perilously close to being ‘too bad to be true’ territory. Meet Ray Maxwell, former Deputy Assistant Secretary at the State Department – and one of the people fingered, then cleared, of wrongdoing in the Benghazi ambassador disaster.  (He since has retired, having served for over two decades. And also, yeah, the entire ‘pariah’ thing.) Mr. Maxwell is now testifying that Hillary Clinton loyalists organized a band of plumbers* to sanitize the relevant files between said disaster, and the inevitable investigation:

When he arrived, Maxwell says he observed boxes and stacks of documents. He says a State Department office director, whom Maxwell described as close to Clinton’s top advisers, was there. Though the office director technically worked for him, Maxwell says he wasn’t consulted about her weekend assignment.

“She told me, ‘Ray, we are to go through these stacks and pull out anything that might put anybody in the [Near Eastern Affairs] front office or the seventh floor in a bad light,’” says Maxwell. He says “seventh floor” was State Department shorthand for then-Secretary of State Clinton and her principal advisors.

“I asked her, ‘But isn’t that unethical?’ She responded, ‘Ray, those are our orders.’ ”

Continue reading Career State Department staffer accuses Hillary Clinton’s staff of sanitizing Benghazi records.

State Department suggests that Americans leave Libya.

Well this doesn’t sound good: “The State Department recommended Tuesday that Americans leave Libya immediately and warned U.S. citizens against any travel to the North African country. The department also said that due to security concerns and limited staffing it was only able to offer limited emergency services to U.S. citizens there.” Also, because I know people are wondering:

Continue reading State Department suggests that Americans leave Libya.

State Department staffers resort to having private #Benghazi memorial anniversary service.

It’s from Talking Points Memo, but what the heck: the Obama administration is apparently doing its best to forget that the Benghazi attack ever happened.

Staffers at State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. held their own private ceremony Wednesday to commemorate the first anniversary of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya after finding out the agency would not be organizing a formal, official memorial service.

The Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi attack left four people dead, including the American Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and Sean Smith, an information management officer in the department’s foreign service.

A State Department staffer who worked with Stevens in Libya and asked not to be named told TPM there were about 20 to 25 staffers at the memorial. The informal gathering was put together after staffers inquired and learned the department would not be holding an official event to mark the anniversary.

Continue reading State Department staffers resort to having private #Benghazi memorial anniversary service.

Joe Biden(?) surrogates continue quiet internal war against Hillary Clinton surrogates.

Quiet, but deadly.

The decision to keep U.S. personnel in Benghazi with substandard security was made at the highest levels of the State Department by officials who have so far escaped blame over the Sept. 11 attack, according to a review of recent congressional testimony and internal State Department memos by Fox News.

Nine months before the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, State Department Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy signed off on an internal memo that green-lighted the Benghazi operation.

The December 2011 memo from Jeffrey Feltman — then-Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) — pledged “to rapidly implement a series of corrective security measures.” However, no substantial improvements were made, according to congressional testimony to the House oversight committee from Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom.

Make no mistake about this.  Fox News is not being leaked this information because the State Department is a hotbed of Republican moles; Fox News is being leaked this information because that network is the only one that can be relied upon to publish damaging information about the State Department under Hillary Clinton.  You can see this by the way that they’re going after Patrick Kennedy, who was SecState Clinton’s assistant (and possibly cutout); and possibly by the way that they’re bringing in the paper-trail CYA warnings by Jeffrey Feltman, who in retrospect may have been forced out of his State Department gig last year for not being a good fit with Clinton’s New Order.  Either way, the implication is that things were not going well for Team Clinton over at State, after all… and while most of the Democratic party might not care for that particular message getting out there’s at least one sub-group who would be; anybody who wouldn’t get a nice job during the Hillary Clinton administration. Continue reading Joe Biden(?) surrogates continue quiet internal war against Hillary Clinton surrogates.

CBS News reports on State Department scandal coverups.

There’s some real dirty laundry, here.

Executive summary: State Department shenanigans involving prostitutes, sexual assaults, drug deals… maybe they happened, maybe they didn’t. We don’t know, because higher-ups in the State Department (Hillary Clinton crony Patrick Kennedy is named-checked) allegedly covered it all up. But there’s a report! Wonder what’s in it! Well, CBS News knows, because screw you, Barack Obama! …And you, too, Hillary Clinton!
Continue reading CBS News reports on State Department scandal coverups.

State Department: sorry, Mr. President. The Keystone Pipeline can go ahead.

The Obama administration is rapidly running out of wiggle room on the Keystone pipeline:

The State Department’s long-awaited environmental report on the Keystone XL pipeline leaves President Barack Obama with no real scientific reason to reject the nation’s most fiercely debated energy project.

The sprawling 2,000-page report, released late Friday afternoon, doesn’t issue a clear yea or nay on a sprawling section of pipeline that would traverse from western Canada to Oklahoma. But the report’s key takeaways — including a conclusion that the project would have “no significant impacts to most resources along the proposed Project route” — Obama may have been hemmed in by his own State Department experts.

Politico went on to say “Environmentalists were left sputtering Friday…” over the decision, as if there was or is ever a moment when environmentalists are not sputtering, on Pavlovian cue.  Although I’ll concede that they’d have their reasons to sputter, here: the best that the State Department could do to scuttle the project is to conclude that it’d have no real impact on the environment, one way or the other. Which makes perfect sense. Canada will be developing its oil sands, because Canada likes money and oil sands can be turned into lots of money without too much fuss and bother. We’ve known for quite some time how to move large amounts of liquids from Point A to Point B without spilling too much of it. Contra the Greenies, we’re not going to stop using hydrocarbons any time soon.  The only question is: How much money is it going to cost American taxpayers to do all of this?

Continue reading State Department: sorry, Mr. President. The Keystone Pipeline can go ahead.